I had a disastrous night’s sleep last night along with some last minute work to do this morning that got may day off to a pretty rough start but I think I recovered admirably and managed to work out, stay on my diet and organize a movie outing for this weekend. I also managed to find quite a few links for you guys that I hope you’re going to enjoy so let’s get to looking at all of those shall we?

Have we broken Olympic records for the last time?
I mean the answer to this question is pretty obviously no but io9’s look at the history of that question and how scientists attempt to interrogate it objectively still manages to be damned fascinating.

Texts From Sweet Valley High
Okay sometimes a sequel DOES manage to be even better than the original and the latest “texts from…” on the Hairpin is maybe the single funniest thing I’ve read on that site in weeks. But I think that’s just because I find teen girl sociopath’s inherently funny. This is also probably why I like Kate Beaton’s Nancy Drew comics so much.

Opinion: In the sexism discussion, let’s look at game culture
This week in the evolving debate on sexism in gaming sees Leigh Alexander who is just all around a bad-ass writer coming out and saying what’s needed to be said for some time now, that maybe all these “one off” examples of horrid misogyny in the gaming world might have some sort of root cause in gaming culture we should take a brief look at.

Infinite Jest tour of Boston
Okay I was kind of going to skip this because the “Hey guys I read Infinite Jest and now never shut up about it” joke has kind of passed being a joke and entered the territory of me just never shutting up about it. HOWEVER this ends up being more about my love of incredibly specific recontextualizations of geographic locations than about the book proper. Plus like 3 separate people sent it to me to ask if I was going to post it.

The Pristine Myth
Holy shit I had not heard that the Amazon might theoretically be a man-made phenomenon. Take that Great Wall of China. Anyway both the article and the interview linked in this Hairpin piece are incredibly fascinating and worth your time.